Bezos-Backed Slate Truck Targets the Forgotten Market

​Meet the Slate Truck—the Amazon Basics of pickups.

Slate Auto, a Michigan startup funded in part by Jeff Bezos, has a bold goal: build a bare-bones electric truck under $20,000 that regular people can actually afford​.

Slate’s strategy is simple: strip out the luxury, keep the essentials. Hand-cranked windows? Check. Minimalist interiors? Absolutely. A real workhorse EV designed for city errands and weekend hauls—not Silicon Valley flexing.

While the major automakers keep pushing prices higher and most EV startups debut expensive, high-tech cars, Slate is diving into the most ignored corner of the market: people who just need an affordable, functional vehicle.

The Slate Truck offers a 52.7 kWh battery with about 150 miles of range, a $50 refundable deposit to reserve, and DIY options like a flat-pack SUV conversion kit that turns it from a two-seat pickup into a five-seat family car.

Performance isn’t the point—though 201 horsepower and 0-60 mph in 8 seconds is respectable. Instead, Slate focuses on practicality: overnight charging from a regular outlet, 1,400 pounds of payload capacity, and easy repairs.

Direct-to-consumer sales cut out dealer markups, though Slate’s service network plans remain a little fuzzy for now.

Skepticism is fair—building a car company is brutally hard. But Slate’s got more than plucky ambition. With Amazon logistics veterans and a deep bench of auto industry engineers backing it, they might actually pull this off.

Bottom line: Slate Auto is swinging for a massive gap in the market: a cheap, American-made EV truck for normal people. And with Jeff Bezos in their corner, they might just succeed.